In today’s competitive economy, efficient integration of technology is imperative for companies to stay innovative. The generation of BIM is already here. Like it or not, companies need to develop BIM strategies to stay competitive in the market either through establishing an in-house BIM team or outsourcing the entire BIM work to a third party consulting company. Companies can be equally successful or unsuccessful with each business model. Based on our experience working globally, a truly innovative company will maintain an in-house BIM team while offshoring additional BIM work to a third party consultant to optimize the BIM outputs.

When it comes to making decisions on hiring an outsourcing team, companies need to be vigilant about the efficiency of information-sharing and the quality of deliverables that the outsourcing companies can offer. Hiring the right outsourcing team requires initial investment to set up the working relationship. Once both companies establish a good working process, the offshoring team could save companies cost and time.

When companies adopt BIM in-house, they must must consider training time & costs, hardware upgrade costs, and software costs. Alternatively, companies can phase out BIM adoption plans by outsourcing certain technologies to a third party consultant while maintaining other technologies in-house. In the case of high-volume deliverable, we believe companies will be better positioned if they maintain a high-level of technical management in-house while hiring outside companies for assistance. Companies can treat these outsourcing partners as an investment that they have access to whenever there is demand. Apart from time and financial savings, a good outsourcing relationship will offer technical assistance and ensure that the quality of the deliverables meets their standards.

Today, technology allows for seamless communication and improved information-sharing. It is rather common in design projects for the architect, structural engineer, and MEP engineers to be spread out geographically. A reliable communication platform through web-based meeting, Google Doc, can fix any issues that arise.

Companies need to make sure the outsourcing partners are experienced, have the adequate communication capabilities, and are accessible. However, in the end, the sustainability of an outsourcing partnership depends upon the people with whom you have a business relationship.